International Women's Day 2026, marked in the villages rather than a hall

An event in a town hall on 8 March reaches the women who can travel to a town hall. That is not the constraint we are working against.

International Women’s Day 2026 was marked across the field area instead, with awareness sessions run in the villages: women’s rights, and the opportunities that are genuinely available — schemes, training, credit, and the enterprises other women in the same block have already started.

The second half is the part that tends to be left out. A rights session that ends without anything a woman can act on next week is a session she will not come back for.

The sessions ran across several days rather than only on the 8th, in whichever village hall or courtyard the women already gather in.

One of the village gatherings. The one at Sanosari ran on 11 March 2026.

This sits alongside the year’s other work in the same direction: 50 self-help groups supported with training in animal husbandry, jewellery-making, livestock, and digital and financial literacy; 887 people enrolled into welfare schemes including Ayushman cards and pensions; and, under the Sangi initiative with the Desai Foundation Trust, 24 women now earning from distributing and selling sanitary pads.